Pharisees, Cancel Culture, and Lazarus | Mysteries in the Gospel of John Season 11

Will you be intimidated by a culture today that's anti Jesus and anti truth Wow Yeshua raised a man That stunk because he had been dead Four days Yeshua raised him from the dead Lazarus We all know this story the aftermath of this story is a little time goes by Lazarus now goes to Bethany and Jesus goes there too. I'm in John chapter 12 Jesus therefore six days before the Passover came to Bethany where Lazarus was whom Jesus whom Yeshua Had raised from the dead So Yeshua is at Bethany Lazarus is there they're gonna have supper together So they made him a supper. I mean is it really let's you see the humanity of Yeshua I mean a lot of times we think of Yeshua and we only think about him in terms of God, but we've got to remember He was also God Incarnate he was clothed in Humanity remember after he had been raised from the dead He appeared to his disciples and they thought it was a ghost and Yeshua said I'm not a ghost look a ghost does not have Flesh and blood look at my hands feel put feel my hands and and look at me. I have flesh so the point is That sometimes when we relate to Yeshua, we only think about him in terms of his God attributes But I think it's important to remember that Yeshua joined himself With humanity in our flesh. In other words, the scripture says in the gospel of John chapter 1 that the word Became flesh so Yeshua is both fully God and fully man listen to what John says in John chapter 1 in the beginning was the word and The word was with God and the word was God So listen to this the word was God and in the 14th verse there in John 1 and the word Became flesh in

Theological terms the word became flesh Theologically, this is called the hypostatic union Where God merged himself with humanity and the two became one So I'm just focusing for a second a beloved one for us to relate to the fact that Yeshua is God But he completely can identify with us as human beings Because God took upon flesh and lived as a man and so here we read in John 12 That Yeshua after he raised lathers from the dead went to Bethany where Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead Dead was and he had supper with him there and so they made him a supper there and Martha was serving and Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table. So what's the application? The application is you can cry on Jesus's shoulder Because he gets you There's an organization. They they've been running some really powerful Commercials during the Super Bowl and during other real strong Mainline programming and they've been running commercials and the organization or the theme of these commercials is He gets us and I love that. He gets us You know some of you right now just feel alone but I want you to know he loves you and He gets you he gets you he understands why you are the way you are and he loves you He gets us. He's he's God that came in the flesh. He experienced what we experience so that he can identify with us and Be compassionate towards us in the nitty-gritty Details and emotions of our life he gets us He gets you He gets you and he doesn't condemn you He understands you and he has compassion on you and he loves you and he wants you to give him your burden The Bible says cast your care upon him For he cares for you. Not just God in the heavens, but God that lived as a man and feels what you feel The Bible says he can identify with us whatever we're going through because he himself was tempted and all things just like we are

And you might think well, he couldn't have been tempted in this situation because like for example Let's say that you're struggling because you're addicted to your smartphone. You could think to yourself, well, how could he have gone through this? Because they didn't even have smartphones when Yeshua lived. It's true, they didn't. But the spirits that are connected to internet addiction or smartphone addiction, Jesus dealt with those spirits when he came that presented themselves to him in different form. So I just wanna stress once again, he loves you and he gets you 100%. And he wants you to open yourself up to him and talk to him, share with him what you're hurting about, share with him what you're struggling with, share with him, ask him to deliver you for whatever you need deliverance from because he came to deliver us from evil. If you stay isolated from him, you're gonna stay in bondage. But if you'll recognize he loves you, he gets you, that he's with you right now wherever you're at and you open up and invite him and ask him to help you, he's gonna deliver you and help you. So he was a man just like you and me. He gets you. Continuing on then, he's there at the supper table.

It says, so they made him a supper there and Martha was serving, but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table. Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples who was intending to betray him said, why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and given to poor people? Now he said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it. Therefore Jesus said, let her alone so they may keep it for the day of my burial. For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. We could go a lot of directions in taking apart this verse right here. A lot of things that I could focus on. Number one, Judas, here he was dressed in religious clothes, yet he was a thief. Even part of Jesus is, you know, 12 disciples. And so we look around in Christendom today and we see those that take advantage of God's people, raising money for themselves, for unjust purposes. This type of shenanigans and nonsense has always gone on. Even one of Jesus' 12 was like this.

And today we see it all the time and we probably see it even more. So this is something that's not new. This is the first thing we could see in this narrative. Then we see Mary that loved Jesus so much that she anointed Jesus' feet with perfume. And what a beautiful picture of someone that loved Jesus and was intimate with Him. A call to you and I to love Him intimately, just like we do. Let's continue on. The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there and they came, and I love this, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead. I mean, I just kind of get this spectacle that, you know, think about it. There wasn't a ton of things going on in their day. There wasn't a million different distractions pulling for their attention. Life was very slow. It wasn't busy. You took care of your livestock. You took care of your garden, your vegetables. You stayed in your village, right? There wasn't TV. There wasn't satellite. There wasn't smartphones. There wasn't any type of events. You didn't get in your car and drive somewhere. No television, all this stuff.

So they were, you know, it was a slow life. So when something like this happened, when someone was amongst them that raised someone from the dead, this was the biggest thing ever in their lives. So when they heard that this one that had raised Lazarus from the dead was in Bethany, man, that's where they're gonna go. But I love what this text says there. They went not only to see Yeshua, but also to see Lazarus. That's what I love. It's just funny to me. They went to see Lazarus, the one that Jesus raised from the dead. I mean, it was such a huge thing. I don't know if there's something about that that I just really get a kick out of. They also went to see Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. The text continues, but the chief priest planned to put, get this now, but the chief priest planned to put Lazarus to death also because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus. This is almost hilarious to me. The chief priest and the Pharisees are trying to wipe out every account of the miracle. They wanted to stop the news of the miracle from spreading. They wanted to stop Lazarus from talking about it. They wanted to erase it from history. And so they decided they were not only going to kill Jesus, but they wanted to kill Lazarus also as if the miracle never occurred. But the chief priest planned to put Lazarus to death also because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus.

In other words, they're all hearing about Lazarus, so let's wipe out this whole miracle. And what does it mean there in the text when it says many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus? Going away from what? They were going away from the chief priest and the Pharisees. And it gets back to what I was speaking about earlier. Why did Jews not believe in Jesus? Because the Pharisees put him to death and did everything they could do to separate the Jews from Yeshua. And the mindset of the Pharisees and the religious leaders of Jesus's day has been passed on to Jews from every generation since these Pharisees. And any Jew that did believe in Yeshua was put out of the synagogue. So eventually Jews that believed in Jesus didn't exist anymore because the Pharisees separated Jews from Yeshua. And for the Jews that did believe in Jesus, they were put out of the synagogue and they were put out of the mainstream culture of the Jewish people. They were rejected by the mainstream culture of Jewish people. So eventually the Jews that believed in Jesus were no longer part of the Jewish community. So today in Judaism, Jesus is considered foreign. Not because the Jews, people of today, know why they reject Jesus, but because by osmosis, they just grew up in an environment where Jews don't believe in Jesus. If you ask a Jew why they don't believe in Jesus, most Jews will tell you, I'm a Jew. Jews don't believe in Jesus. But that's kind of a circular answer, isn't it? Why don't you believe in Jesus? Why don't Jews believe in Jesus? The answer, Jews don't believe in Jesus. And that's as far as you go. If you ask why, many Jews will say, probably most, well, I'm a Jew. I don't believe in Jesus.

If you really dig why, they don't know why. They might say, well, we're a Jew, you know, we only believe in one God. Well, if you're a Christian, we only believe in one God too. We just believe that God has manifested himself multidimensionally in the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we can't understand that any more than we can't understand where God came from. He's beyond our understanding. He's beyond our comprehension. But inside God, there's community. This is why God said in Bershid, in the book of Genesis, let us make man in our image. And so Jewish people, well, we don't believe in Jesus because we believe there's only one God. We believe there's only one God too. But we believe that he's beyond comprehension. And within the Godhead, there's always been community. The Son has always been in the bosom. God is a God of love and love by definition needs an object. And Yeshua has always been that object. God is Father, Son, and Spirit. And so I hope this lesson today has been educational for you. We looked at several different things. We looked really at the hilarity of the Pharisees' response to Yeshua performing a miracle that they could not contain. In desperation, they responded to it by trying to put Lazarus to death and put Jesus to death. And this mindset of hostility... towards the message of Yeshua continues in the general Jewish community even to this day, not because Jewish people have examined the claims of Jesus and researched His fulfillment of Messianic prophecy, but because they've absorbed this anti-Jesus mindset of the Pharisees that lived during the time of Jesus. We explored that. And then we explored the hilarity of the Pharisees' response when they tried even to put Lazarus to death, to wipe out all trace of the miracle. And

then we looked at also today the elaborate love response opposite of the Pharisees and religious leaders that had a murderous spirit in them. They had a murderous spirit. Remember Jesus said to them in John 8, when they said they were Abraham's children, Jesus said, if you were Abraham's children, you would love me, for I've come forth from God. But as it is, you're seeking to murder me. This Abraham would not do. So this was a murderous spirit in the Pharisees and the chief priests. And even today in Israel, when you have outspoken Jewish believers like myself, they are assaulted there. I mean, they are assaulted, persecuted with a murderous spirit. So this spirit that was on the Pharisees continues in Israel amongst religious leaders towards Jews that believe in Jesus, like myself, even to this day. But Mary's response, of course, that we explored was quite opposite that. She anointed Jesus' feet with a costly bottle of perfume, and the perfume gave off a fragrance that spilled into the whole room. So let me ask you a question, dear beloved friend. Will you be intimidated by a culture today that's anti-Jesus and anti-truth and even has a murderous spirit in it? And the murderous spirit in our culture today is being manifest through a cancel culture towards any believer that's taking a stand for truth, whether it's taking a truth about abortion, whether it's taking a stand for truth about religious freedom, whether it's taking a stand for truth about in the beginning, God created them male and female, two distinct biological sexes. And when we take stands for truth like this, we're assaulted with a murderous spirit by our culture. Well, they want to cancel us. Some are losing their jobs. Will you bow down and be intimidated by the murderous spirit that's in our culture today? It's the same spirit that Jesus and his disciples encountered 2,000 years ago. Will you back off and let it snuff you out? Or will you be like Mary and Jesus? Despite the murderous spirit that was around her and Jesus, she worshiped him with her whole life, pouring this vial of perfume worth a whole year of wages at his feet and then wiped his feet with her hair. This extravagant outpouring of love and the fragrance of that affected everybody within her sphere of influence as the fragrance filled the room. Today I say, by the

grace of God, as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. And even if we get put to death for our faith like Jesus did, we will praise Yah. We will praise Yahweh, knowing that we're going to be raised from the dead into eternal happiness forevermore. Beloved one, take your stand for Jesus. In the book of Numbers chapter 6, the Lord gave instructions to Moses and Aaron to speak this blessing over his people. And the Lord said, when you speak these words over my people, I will place my name on them and bless them. Receive the impartation of the Lord's blessings. P'nav eylekha vi'chuneykha Yisra'ya we'p'nav eylekha ve'asem le'kha Shalom The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up by His countenance and the Lord give you, beloved one, His peace. God bless you and Shalom.